TEXTINGS ✥ OPEN TO ALL

[bambicakes]

❝No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention.❞

Comments

/GETS YOU A FANCY CHALICE I GUESS

[rageful]

I'll see you there.

Did you really think I'd miss that debacle?

[There is, casually, no mention of that "has-been". He is deliberate about this, almost petulant.]

You're a lousy liar, Mori.

[He flashes a brief smile down at the phone, knowing she will never see it; it is an honest one, full of teeth, and slightly cruel (oh, he knows, but what can he do? His kindness has run out. It is so foreign to him now - ). Still, he hides it behind the spurs of his knuckles. He remembers Sydney and the predatory nature of the sky and how he turned his collar up against the rain, patting his jacket down, feeling for the familiar wireframe of those aviators, and seeing out of the corner of his eyes, the way Mako's shoulders shifted like tiny tectonic plates. She had been giggling at some furtive joke and it was like the sound was some corporeal thing wrecking through her limbs -]

1/2 WOW THIS IS LIKE SERVICE DELUXE HERE SHAY I'M IMPRESSED

[synchronised]

[ She's tempted to remind Chuck that they're all rangers and that Raleigh, whether he liked it or not, had gone and succeeded at the same program that had made the both of them. Mako's not sure why she's tempted, though she suspects it has something to do with just being contrary.

But they're talking (for a generous definition of the word "talk") and she doesn't know when that will happen again.

(Funny, how one of the few constants in her life can still manage to be that, well — inconstant.) ]

You should take better care of your things, Mr. Hansen.

[ Mr. Hansen. The affectation is almost laughable, like she's poking fun at her own professionalism. It feels dangerous to Mako, like she's tipping too far too far in a single direction rather than trying to stay focused on dead center. But she knows where those sunglasses are; in fact, she's kept very good care of them ever since she rediscovered them amongst her things while unpacking. These days they sit on the low shelf that runs alongside her bed, right beside her alarm clock, tuck behind a small glass figurine Pentecost had bought her when she was still a little girl. ]

2/2

[synchronised]

[ A beat.

Two.



Three.



Then: ] I want to fight him.

[ Mako regrets pressing send almost immediately. (Chuck's always had that effect on her.) ]

1/2

[rageful]

[When you're a successful Ranger, your whole life is spread open to the public; you're a fighter for show. You're a headline. Glory and gore go hand-in-hand at the Shatterdome. So, unsurprisingly, Chuck is familiar with Raleigh's stats; he can read him like the specs on a warhead. That's not the point. (...He just doesn't have the patience or the right sense of vulnerability to explain to her why he felt...betrayed by this guy, how he felt cheated of the idea that heroes can't fall --

because everybody can fall, can't they -- ?

Their conversations always end up like this, mired in their own miasmic silences and the bitter tang of their individual inability to simply open up.)

It's time to change the subject.]

Oi, don't call me that. Makes me feel like my old man.

[There is an obvious playfulness strung between them now, delicate as spider-silk (and doomed to be short-lived). Chuck knew she was trying to rouse a rise out of him for fun.

And it's working.]

2/2

[rageful]

[Oh.

He types a reply.

He immediately erases it.

He tries again.

Then:] I thought you weren't up to jockey.

[...and, yeah, Chuck knows that he's her perpetual "poor life choice". Oddly enough, he actually counts this as an achievement.]

[synchronised]

[ The brief stint of playfulness they'd been able to muster is immediately squashed by the sudden shift in conversation. Momentum is so rarely often on their side, either halted by the uneven start-stop of their exchanges or otherwise simply barreling forward, snowballing into conflict or misunderstanding. When they were children things had been easier, but isn't that always the case with kids? Both angry and seething in their young skins they had served as reflections of one another; served until the mirror cracked, splintering them both in directions opposite of each other.

Chuck's right. She isn't up to jockey, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to. At the end of the day, she would defer but up until that moment she would fight — not furiously or explosively, the way that Chuck might have, but with a restrained tenacity shored up by conviction. ]

I'm not.

[ I should be. ]